Severe cost overruns made the 2014 Winter Olympics the most
expensive Olympics in history; with Russian politician
Boris Nemtsov citing allegations of corruption among government officials,[4] and Allison Stewart of the
Saïd Business School at
Oxford citing tight relationships between the government and construction firms.[5] While originally budgeted at US$12 billion, various factors caused the budget to expand to US$51 billion, surpassing the estimated $44 billion cost of the
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The lead-up to these Games were marked by several major controversies, including allegations that corruption among officials led to the aforementioned
cost overruns, concerns for the safety of
LGBT athletes and spectators due to recent government actions, protests by ethnic
Circassian activists over use of a site where they believe
a genocide took place in the 19th century), and threats by
jihadist groups tied to the
insurgency in the North Caucasus.

In May 2016, The New York Times published allegations by Dr.
Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of an anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, that
FSB agents conspired with corrupt officials and Russian athletes to run a
state-sponsored doping program, which tampered with over 100 urine samples, and that a third of the medals won by Russia in Sochi were the result of doping. An
independent report commissioned by the
World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed these allegations, prompting investigations into individual athletes by the IOC. Currently, 31 Russian athletes are disqualified. In December 2017, the IOC announced that it had banned the
Russian Olympic Committee from the
2018 Winter Olympics, with an option for clean athletes to compete independently; the IOC stated that the program was "one of the worst ever blows against the integrity and reputation of the Olympic Games"[6]